Comment by denkmoon
Comment by denkmoon 2 days ago
In Australia 5 out of 5 people are covered by Medicare, and 5 of them bear the burden. (at some point in their life. assuming they become a tax payer, which seems likely for most.)
Comment by denkmoon 2 days ago
In Australia 5 out of 5 people are covered by Medicare, and 5 of them bear the burden. (at some point in their life. assuming they become a tax payer, which seems likely for most.)
What percentage of Australian society is net-positive tax payer? That’s your real number, not this pretend 5 out of 5 as you claim.
More info on Australia from a quick search.
- Public hospital birth is about $0-1k USD.
- Private hospital with health insurance: $2-3k USD
- Private without insurance: typically up to $13k USD
There's no way that's true - include the employer side payroll taxes. Whether PPP or nominal my napkin math gives me 40% more tax payable in Australia
Edit: I'm too dumb to know whether to include superannuation as a tax or not so I'm not sure if I'm right or not.
Superannuation is not a tax. It’s a compulsory retirement saving/investment scheme.
However to calculate total income taxes you do need to include the 15% tax on superannuation contributions.
If your pre-tax take home salary is $100k AUD, then your total salary package is 111.5k including the 11.5% compulsory employer superannuation contribution.
You’ll pay regular income taxes + 2% Medicare levy on $100k and your $11.5k super contribution will be taxed at 15%.
So your total income tax including the Medicare levy (but assuming you don’t pay the Medicare surcharge or claim any deductions) will be $24,513. Giving an effective tax rate of 20.2%
There are no state or local income taxes in Australia so that’s it for personal income taxes. However states do charge payroll tax on most companies payroll (e.g. 4.85% on annual payroll over $1M in the state of Victoria for companies in the Melbourne metro area).
From the top:
Health spending in 2023–24
In 2023–24, Australia spent an estimated $270.5 billion on health goods and services– an average of approximately $10,037 per person. In real terms (adjusted for inflation), health spending increased by 1.1%, or $2.8 billion more than spending from 2022–23.
In 2023–24, health spending accounted for 10.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Australia, approximately 0.2 percentage points higher than in 2022–23.
From the bottom:
In Australia, 15% of all expenditure on health care comes directly from individuals in the form of out‐of‐pocket fees — this is almost double the amount contributed by private health insurers.
There is concern that vulnerable groups — socio‐economically disadvantaged people and older Australians in particular, who also have higher health care needs — are spending larger proportions of their incomes on out‐of‐pocket fees for health care.
A 2019 study identified that one in three low income households are spending more than 10% of their income on health care.
There's little to no public advertising of prescription drugs, cheap generics are widely available from federal scale bulk negotiation deals.
Health outcomes are greater life expectancy than the US, national scale cancer survuival rates are better by a few percentage points (IIRC - they are close but higher).
Australia has long had an innate "we're all in this together" society built on individualism. It's not great, it's not perfect, but the first instinct is generally to look after our own - across the board.
When I was in the USA just paying for things like a GP and a single specialist didn't seem outrageous coming from Australia.
If I worked in the US, I would have health insurance and would be paying lower out of pocket costs than I would in Australia. Combined with the higher salary and cheaper housing that's a pretty good deal.
Edit:
We allegedly have universal healthcare but that doesn't cover any actually competent specialist (need private healthcare for this) so paying $400 for 25 minutes of a psychiatrist every 2 months and $95 for 7 minutes of a GP is common.
On top of that, 53% pay for Private Health Care as well.
https://www.health.gov.au/topics/private-health-insurance/re...
On top of that many things that are 'not urgent' you have to pay for yourself.
I have recently paid over 20K for back surgery. Prior to the back surgery I could barely walk. This was deemed 'not urgent' and had I would have had to have waited at least 18 months for surgery via Medicare.
I also have private health cover.
So, it's important for non-Australians to understand, our health system is far from a panacea where taxes pay for everything.
Currently 778 K Australians are waiting for 'elective surgery' .
https://www.aihw.gov.au/hospitals/topics/elective-surgery